Open source software funding —DEV protocol as a viable option
This is a continuation of my article from 2 years ago — Monetizing early-stage open-source projects
Problems with OSS funding
We have been developing our open source project SQ-UI for more than 2 years and I would like to share my experience of receiving funding for a small sized OSS project.
Why is it essential for a small open source project to get funded in the first place?
My answer to this question is: to support the development of open source. This could mean hiring a full-time developer to implement new feature, hire a professional UI/UX designer, paying for a development server, etc.
Why is it hard for small OSS projects to get funded?
For more than 2 years we did not get enough exposure on platforms like Github sponsors, Gitcoin, Open collective or Codefund. It’s hard for a project with a small community to get noticed or to meet the minimum requirements to use such platforms.
Did you invest time and money to promote your work?
By doing this, you start sacrificing the development time of your project in favor of marketing. We spent a lot of time preparing articles, posts, tweets, memes and even spend some money on payed ads. Nothing helped to get us the 100 stars on github and pass the minimal requirements.
DEV protocol
DEV protocol and the platform stakes.social turned out to be the only viable option to receive funding for our project.
Here is illustrated how the whole funding process works:
Applying to the stakes.social platform is a straightforward process. You need the github repository for your OSS project and a wallet to connect it to. You can use any wallet that supports ERC20 tokens like Metamask and Coinbase Wallet to hold your DEV tokens. If you want to interact with the stakes.social platform your wallet has to support one of the following protocols: WalletLink , WalletConnect, Fortmatic or Metamask. After you submit your request your project will be reviewed and added to the platform.
As developers / creators
You need patrons to stake their DEV tokens on your project so both parties can earn. We managed to get 422 tokens at the price of $15 per token. We will invest these tokens in our project by paying for the professional services of UX designer and starting a bounty program for features and bugs to stimulate our community.
The second way to earn DEV tokens as a creator is to apply for the incubator program.
These are the OSS projects listed in the first round of the incubator program: Signal, Python, WikiMedia Foundation, Prysm, Jekyll, Ether.js, 11ty, Rust, Rotki, WalletConnect, SigmaPrime’s Lighthouse, WomenWhoCode, ESLint, Snowpack, Vite, Web3j, BrightID, Deno, Umbra, and Prettier.
Find more about the incubator program by reading:
As patrons
You can obtain DEV tokens in 3 different ways:
- By exchanging ETH on Uniswap
2. By staking your DEV tokens on a project you want to support
3. By providing liquidity to the pool in Uniswap and earn % of each transaction tax
Our experience as patrons was pleasing as we managed to buy DEV tokens and stake them on other projects with ease.
Conclusion
Our overall experience with DEV is above expectations, even still in beta version of the stakes.social platform. The team behind this project is serious, invested immense amount of work to provide us with a tool to fund OSS projects. Also a good thing to mention here is that the project is community-driven and you can submit your proposals in the forum: https://community.devprotocol.xyz/
And this is just the beginning ^_^. More features are coming to stakes.social, such as the option to tokenize your Github account.
More related articles to be read about the project:
Ultimately you can support our OSS project:
